AL JAZIRAH, YEMEN — Yemen’s civil war has generated the perfect conditions for a massive oil spill to happen. Here are the details:
The Guardian reports that an abandoned and rusting oil tanker with 1.1 million barrels of oil on board is like a ticking time bomb that can easily break up and cover the Yemen coastline under tons of crude oil.
The FSO Safer is a single-hulled tanker that carries four times more oil than was spilled during the massive Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.
The ship was abandoned in 2017 and keeps on deteriorating while Yemen’s Houthi rebels fight a civil war against a Saudi-led coalition on the land next to it.
In May 2020, water entered the ship’s engine room through a leaking pipe, and the vessel's fire extinguishing system is now non-operational, according to a study published in the journal Nature Sustainability.
Researchers say a hull breach would cover important coral reefs in oil, while also closing desalination plants and cutting 9 million people off from clean water.
The likely oil spill would also destroy a big part of Yemen’s fish sources at a time when the country is starting to suffer from a famine.
The rebels, who control the area where the ship is located, have previously blocked UN inspectors from assessing the vessel.
However, the Houthis have repeatedly blamed the Saudi-led coalition that is fighting them for preventing UN inspectors access to the tanker.
